


Coming Home

by okemmelie



Category: Black Friday - Team StarKid
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-06
Updated: 2019-12-06
Packaged: 2021-02-26 02:40:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21696319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/okemmelie/pseuds/okemmelie
Summary: Tom leaves Hatchetfield. Then he comes home twice.
Relationships: Becky Barnes/Tom Houston, Jane Perkins/Tom Houston
Comments: 7
Kudos: 10





	1. Leaving

**Author's Note:**

> this has been sitting unfinished in my google drive since early november, so i'm hoping publishing the first chapter will inspire me to finish the last two. hopefully they'll be up soon! if not, i guess this works alone lsdfsldjf

The cinema is already dark when Tom opens the door. A few other movie-goers turn to look at him, but he doesn’t really notice. He’s too busy looking back at Becky and making sure she’s following. Together, they make their way to their seats, G7 and G8. It’s where they always sit and today is no different. After carefully placing their popcorn on the floor and not so carefully shoving their bags under their seats, they finally get comfortable. Tom grabs their popcorn from the floor, then he grabs Becky’s hand and gives it a squeeze.

It’s some kind of romcom and none of them really care about romcoms. It’s not like they go to the Cineplex to watch movies anyway. They sometimes go to makeout, but mostly, they just like spending quality time together. And since high school is almost over, they figure they need to pretend to watch one final shitty movie together before Tom goes overseas.

Becky is the one who leans in to kiss him and her lips feel like home. They’ve been dating for forever. Three years is close to forever, anyway. Three years and he hasn’t gotten bored of kissing Becky, of being with Becky, of Becky. At this point, he doesn’t think he could, not ever. She’s a bright light in his life and he tries to be the same for her. She tells him that of course he is, but he doesn’t believe anything could shine as brightly as Becky.

Hatchetfield is their kingdom. The quarterback and the cheer captain. It sometimes feels like they could take over the world, if they wanted to. Tom doesn’t want to. He’s perfectly content just making out with her in the cinema and with sliding his hand up her thigh. He would slide it under her skirt if it wasn’t for the fact that someone sat right next to them. It’s fine, he decides. They have time for a quicky in his car before he has to drop her off at home later tonight.

Just as she was the one to initiate their kiss, she’s the one to break it. “What’s this movie about, anyway?” Her voice is a whisper. It’s low, but not low enough to not earn them a dirty look from the girl in the seat next to her.

Tom shrugs. He honestly haven’t followed and he isn’t even sure what it’s called. “It’s about you...” He points to her, then steals a quick kiss. “... Making out… With me.” He leans in a bit closer to her again and puts on his best puppy dog eyes. Becky nods for a while as she seems to think it through. Then she shrugs as well and leans in to kiss him once more.

Maybe they should make something special and different out of this, their last movie together until Tom returns, but kissing her is nice and he likes the familiarity of it. It feels like  _ them _ and Tom likes them. In fact, he likes them a lot. When he comes home, he’ll take her out for a movie, he promises himself. He’ll try to make it more special, but this is good. This is fine. This is them.

A loud sigh makes Tom break the kiss and he looks up as the girl next to them gets up, perhaps to go to the restroom, perhaps to find another seat. He isn’t sure and he doesn’t care. This means they have the entire row to themselves and Tom can’t make such an opportunity go to waste.

“Hey, Beck?” He pulls his bag out from under the seat and starts rummaging through it. She leans closer to see what’s happening and to signal that she’s listening. “You know how we always sit here?”

He’s still rummaging when Becky leans back and laughs a little. “Yes, Tom. Of course I know.” They were supposed to be watching a horror movie earlier today, but Tom had refused to see it since they couldn’t get the right seats and Becky had bullied him before telling him she thought it was sweet. “Why, what’s up?”

Finally! He finds what he’s looking for. His old bike key that he has yet to throw out. He shoves the bag back under the seat and turns his full attention to Becky again. “I figured that, with this being our last trip to the cinema before high school is over… maybe we leave something here?”

“... Leave something here? Like what?”

_ Jingle, jingle _ . He hands her the key. “Like a memory. A carving of some sort. To remind us of us.”

It takes her a moment of looking at her skeptically to fully take the key away from him. “Alright, Mr. Houston. I’m in. What kind of carving are you thinking?”

“Anything your heart desires.”

Becky nods for a long time as she seems to either be taking his idea in or just trying to come up with something to carve, he isn’t sure which it is. When she comes to a stop, she’s already making her way to the seat in front of her with the key. He can’t quite see what she’s carving. Not until she pulls back, at least.

“It’s… a penis.”

“It’s a penis!” She repeats. A bit too loudly, perhaps, because a few heads turn to look at them and they both whisper quiet ‘ _ I’m sorry _ ’s, before they giggle among themselves. Tom throws an arm around her shoulder and pulls her a little closer.

“I love you, you know.”

“I know,” she repeats. “I love you too.” Then she kisses him. It’s a good movie.

They spend the rest of high school as boyfriend and girlfriend. They graduate boyfriend and girlfriend. They party as boyfriend and girlfriend. It’s a good time and they have it good together. Not quite perfect, but good. There’s the ever looming thought of the reality that they’ll soon have to face: Tom is leaving. He’s going to join the army and he isn’t sure when he’ll be back.

It’s one of his last days in town and they’re taking a walk together down by the lake. The weather’s nice and they’re walking hand in hand. They’re not dancing around reality. They’ve talked about it a lot, in fact, but today is for them. At least it was supposed to be, but apparently Becky gets another idea. “Tom?”

“Yes, Becky?”

She stops in her tracks. Then she takes a few few steps so she’s standing in front of him. “Today has been wonderful. These past years have been wonderful. I don’t want it to end.”

Tom smiles. It’s bittersweet. “I’m sorry, babe.” He lets go of her hand and wraps his arms fully around her, pulling her in for a hug. “I’ll be back eventually.”

“I’ll wait for you.”

Another smile. Still bittersweet. He’s not emotionally armed to deal with this right now, but he’s going to try his best. “It’s alright if you don’t.”

“Yeah, well… I want to.” She laughs a little. It doesn’t sound entirely happy either. She looks up and meets his eyes, and he swears he can see tears forming in them. He’s not sure though, because he’s already crying and it’s making it hard to see.  _ Fuck _ .

“We’ll figure it out. We always do.”

Becky says goodbye to him the day he leaves. They kiss goodbye and promise each other they’ll stay in touch. And they do. Writing letters home to Becky is some of his happiest moments while he’s away. Not  _ the  _ happiest, though. The happiest is receiving them.

They eventually stop coming.


	2. Coming Back

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apparently, publishing one chapter inspired me to write another one already and so here it is. also, gary goldstein is the best black friday character and no one can stop me from putting him here

Returning to Hatchetfield feels weird. It’s been a while and not all of his friends are still in town. He’s tried contacting Becky, but it’s been unsuccessful so he’s let it go. He has, however, been successful in contacting Gary Goldstein, one of his friends from high school, and Gary has agreed to come over and help Tom move into his new place.

It’s a fairly small apartment and Tom would even go so far as to call it a shitty one, but it doesn’t matter much. It’s an apartment and it’s his own. He doesn’t have a lot of shit, anyway, so what does it matter? He figures he better get started before Gary comes over so it doesn’t look like he’s just been sitting on the floor, drinking a beer.

He opens a window and grabs the box closest to him. It’s filled with plates he got from his mother and he very quickly decides to close it again, as he doesn’t feel like he can be bothered. Not with this box anyway. He opens another one and as he goes to lift a lamp out of it, he gets distracted. He’s spotted something. Something far more exciting.

So he lets go of the lamp and sits back down on the floor, only to pull out a big envelope marked _Becky_. Maybe he should try being productive, he tells himself as he opens the envelope and starts taking out the letters. There’s a lot of them, but he’s already read them what feels like a million times, so rereading them takes no time.

With a sudden burst of motivation, Tom gets off the floor once again and he quickly searches through his boxes. He’s four boxes in when he finally finds his tape, then he very quickly goes back to the letters. They’re going on the wall, he’s decided. It’s not like he has anything else to decorate them with. Besides, Becky is the best - and the most beautiful - thing he can think of. She’s going on his wall.

The doorbell rings when he’s almost done hanging up all the letters and Tom goes to open. Outside is, of course, Gary. He greets his old friend in a hug: A proper bro-hug, of course. “Gary! How have you been?”

“Busy, but good. Law school’s a lot.” His high school friend steps inside and takes a look around while Tom closes the door behind him. “Hey, Tom? Quick question. What is up with all those letters?”

Tom steps closer to one of his walls and lets a finger run down the side of one of the letters. “They’re letters Becky sent me. I figured they’d make great decorations and I was right.”

“Uhh. Tom? You know Becky’s married, right? She’s moved on.” Gary puts a hand on Tom’s shoulder and offers a sympathetic smile. “And I don’t know how to tell you this but… you are _so_ wrong. This looks awful.”

“Well, I’m keeping it!” Tom pulls back a bit. He would regret snapping, if it wasn’t for the fact that he was not ready to let Becky go. Sure, he had had his suspicions that something like this might have been going on, but he’d hoped for something better. That maybe Becky just forgot to write back to him and thought _he_ was the asshole. He had hoped she had waited, ‘cause he sure as hell wasn’t ready to move on.

At least Gary doesn’t try to bring her up again that day.

As much as Tom hates Gary bringing up Becky, he loves it too. It’s nice having just a tiny bit of insight in her life, but it’s even nicer to have a friend in town to tell him to get his shit together. And Gary’s known him since forever, so he doesn’t leave when Tom gets grumpy and that’s the exact kind of support Tom needs.

Seeing as Tom mostly skulks around at home - and occasionally works shifts at the closest kiosk - it’s a nice change of pace when Gary asks him, if he’s up for hitting town. Not that he _is_ up for it, but Gary is both persistent and persuasive, so Tom ends up going out anyway. There’s not a lot of bars in Hatchetfield, so they go to Clyvesdale.

They end up in a small Irish Pub and Gary buys them a Guinness each, but ends up giving his to Tom and instead buying a rum and coke. _It just tastes better_ , he tells Tom and Tom just shrugs and happily drinks two beers instead of one. He’s not about to complain about free drinks and especially not two of them.

Later that evening, he accidentally walks into a young woman on his way to the bathrooms. She doesn’t seem to spill or anything, so he doesn’t stop and just mumbles a ‘ _My bad’_ on his way past her.

She doesn’t accept that. “I’m sorry, what was that?”

“Maybe if you’d listened, you would’ve heard I said ‘ _my bad_ ’.” Tom finally looks up at her, prepared to meet her in a sarcastic smile, but then she turns out to be really pretty and he’s at a loss for what to do. “I– I’m sorry.”

At least that seems to make her laugh a little. “That’s alright. Why’re you so grumpy looking? Did somebody walk into you?” Her tone is teasing and her smile still there. Tom was sure pretty women hadn’t been a problem earlier in his life, so how come they made him like this now?

“Na, I just… really gotta use the restroom.” _Stupid_. He smiles at her, probably a bit too goofily, then he excuses himself to the bathroom.

During the rest of the evening, the two share a few looks and smiles. It’s a nice feeling. He’s about to leave without talking to her again, when Gary punches his shoulder and tells him to get his shit together. “You need to go over there and talk to her, Tom. You gotta.”

And so he does. He asks for her name and she tells him _Jane_ . Then he asks is he can text her when he’s sober and she smiles, then asks him for his phone. She does _something_ on it, then gives him a quick kiss on the cheek before handing it back.

Sure enough, her number is in his phone when he wakes up and he still kind of feels her lips against his cheek, but maybe he’s just imagining things. He texts her and she texts back. He asks her out for coffee and she says yes.

They go out and it’s a good time. Jane’s nice and beautiful. She’s interesting, but unlike him she doesn’t seem to be a mess. She doesn’t drink coffee, but she does drink hot chocolate and she gets a little cream stuck on her upper lip and she looks absolutely adorable.

He asks if he can walk her home and she says yes, so he does. On the way, he asks if he can invite her out for dinner at another time. To that, she says yes as well. He asks if he can kiss her goodbye and to that, she doesn’t answer. She kisses him instead.

On his way home, he can’t think of anything but Jane. When he unlocks his door, he can’t think of anything but Jane. When he takes down Becky’s letters from his walls, he still can’t think of anything but Jane, Jane, _Jane_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this fic used to have a third chapter but i've taken it down because i was really unhappy with how it turned out. hopefully i'll post it later but slkdfjsd i just really want to do it justice so it might be some time


End file.
